# FeedFetcher-Google

Google's Feedfetcher article, updated 2026-02-11, says Feedfetcher crawls RSS or Atom feeds for Google News and WebSub after a person starts an app or service that asks for the feed. It says Feedfetcher ignores robots.txt entries because it behaves as a direct agent of that person, not as a robot. The article says a site can serve 404 or 410 to the Feedfetcher-Google user agent. This check does not apply that server response. The user-triggered list publishes the HTTP string FeedFetcher-Google. This check matches the whole token, so a group named only Feedfetcher does not match, and it still reports the RFC 9309 decision.

- Operator: Google
- Kind: user_fetch
- robots.txt: does_not_follow. The vendor says this crawler does not follow robots.txt rules.
- HTTP user-agent: FeedFetcher-Google; (+http://www.google.com/feedfetcher.html) The user-triggered list prints this HTTP string. The Feedfetcher article spells the same user agent Feedfetcher-Google. Neither page prints a separate robots.txt User-agent line. A group named only Feedfetcher does not match this token.
- IP list: https://developers.google.com/static/crawling/ipranges/user-triggered-fetchers-google.json
- Source: https://developers.google.com/crawling/docs/crawlers-fetchers/google-user-triggered-fetchers (retrieved 2026-10-18)

## JSON

`curl -s https://whosthatbot.com/v1/crawlers/feedfetcher-google`

## Check this token

tools/call with name check_robots is the same check at https://whosthatbot.com/mcp. Send `Content-Type: application/json` and `Accept: application/json, text/event-stream`. The pasted file disallows FeedFetcher-Google on `/docs` and allows `*`. The call does not fetch a host.

```
curl -s https://whosthatbot.com/mcp -H 'content-type: application/json' -H 'accept: application/json, text/event-stream' -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"check_robots","arguments":{"robots_txt":"User-agent: FeedFetcher-Google\nDisallow: /\n\nUser-agent: *\nAllow: /\n","path":"/docs","ids":["feedfetcher-google"]}}}'
```

That call returns fetched_target false. This row is disallow via group FeedFetcher-Google, rule Disallow: /.

Each card paraphrases the linked vendor page and was checked on source.retrieved. This is not legal advice. robots.txt is a request from the site owner. Botcard does not fetch third-party sites and does not suggest ways around a disallow rule.